Arrive late to a master class at Grooves Unlimited in Livingston and you won’t need to ask for directions to the tap studio.

Recently, 30 dancers hoofed loudly enough to be heard a floor below. A moment of especially frenetic footwork during the four-hour clinic caused a framed piece of wall décor just outside the studio to come crashing down.

“There is such a hunger for this dance,” said Ms. Atkinson, 25, the festival’s founder and organizer.

“People are so interested and happy to learn about it. They come from everywhere,” she said, including Europe, Asia and South America.

Nearly half the students for the Grooves Unlimited master class traveled from outside New Jersey to Livingston, and most will return for the festival, which is expected to attract around 150 people. The four-day event will begin at Dancers Pointe, a Roselle Park studio that has served as festival headquarters since 2015. On Saturday, the dancers will move to the Westminster Arts Center in Bloomfield to put on a showcase.

Ms. Atkinson started planning the Jersey Tap Fest in 2010, when she was 17, with birthday money saved during her childhood in Basking Ridge. “It’s gone from ‘Aww, you’re so cute, you go ahead and start that little festival project,’ to, ‘Oh! She’s serious. She can actually do this,’” Ms. Atkinson said.

The proof is in the boldface faculty members she has recruited — dancers like Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, who was Michael Jackson’s private tap teacher; Sean Fielder, founder and artistic director of the Boston Tap Company and, like Ms. Sumbry-Edwards, a veteran of the musical “Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk”; and Nicholas Young, a former “Stomp” cast member who was instructing the recent Grooves Unlimited master class.

“She’s built something from the ground up, and it has this inviting community vibe,” Mr. Young said, wiping away sweat during a break.

Artists of his caliber are attracted to the festival because of it, and also because as professional tap dancers, they stick together. “We’re a family,” Mr. Young said. “The tap community is still pretty small, even though festivals have been popping up everywhere in the last 20 years. We do things for each other, not for the money, because there’s very little of that. We just want to help each other and spread the word about our art form.”

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Jersey Tap Fest students taking a bow.CreditRobert Nauta

But if the sense of familiarity and warmth fostered by Ms. Atkinson has allowed the festival to flourish, its location has helped, too.

“A lot of people do recognize what a profound history of tap we have here,” Ms. Atkinson said. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without the contributions of the artists who came before me in New Jersey. There’s a total bloodline.” Homegrown artists include Deborah Mitchell, the founder and executive director of the New Jersey Tap Ensemble and a former Jersey Tap Fest faculty member, and Savion Glover.

The New Jersey Tap Ensemble, in Bloomfield, was the first pre-professional company Ms. Atkinson joined, as a 15-year-old, after starting tap lessons at age 12. She considers Ms. Mitchell a mentor.

“I owe so much of my training to her, and I love her very much,” Ms. Atkinson said. “That company will always be home to me.”

Yvette Glover, Mr. Glover’s mother, gave Ms. Atkinson her start as a professional. “She was the first person ever to hire me for a gig. I was 16, and we danced at a church in Newark with a band,” Ms. Atkinson recalled. “She also had a weekly jam in Newark at a dive bar called Skipper’s, on University Avenue. It was in a horrible neighborhood, and I’d do my homework in the back corner when we weren’t dancing.”

Later, Ms. Atkinson moved to Manhattan and began traveling to international festivals as a featured soloist. Those performances are continuing, as is her membership in Ms. Sumbry-Edwards’s group Sophisticated Ladies, which puts on weekly shows at the Cotton Club in Harlem.

Despite her travels and city performances, however, it seems clear that Ms. Atkinson, with both her school and her festival operating out of New Jersey, is devoted to her home state.

“I feel like I owe it to the tap community here to slice off a piece of myself and give it away for four days with this festival,” she said.

Ninety percent of festival enrollees are returning students, and many have been coming since 2010. In addition to organizing, producing, directing and performing, Ms. Atkinson teaches. “I couldn’t resist teaching at my own event,” she said. “I love it too much.”

Most classes are for intermediate students, with three or more years of training, and advanced students, who have had five or more years of training. But this year the festival is introducing Tiny Taps, for dancers ages 8 to 12 with fewer than three years of training, and a beginner-level class for dancers 25 and up.

The new offerings reflect tap’s wide appeal. “There’s a common denominator of interest across age, race and gender,” Ms. Atkinson said, adding that it cannot be said of most other dance genres.

She likened the night before Tap Fest starts to Christmas Eve. “I can barely sleep I’m so excited,” she said. “And then once it starts, it’s stressful. But as an artist, you owe it to your artistic community to keep something going if it’s a success.”

Jersey Tap Fest will take place Aug. 11 to 14 at Dancers Pointe, 122 East Westfield Avenue in Roselle Park, and at the Westminster Arts Center, 449 Franklin Street, in Bloomfield. For more information: 973-932-0561 or jerseytapfest.com.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page NJ11 of the New York edition with the headline: Follow the Sounds of Shuffling Feet. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe